The Daughter of an Empress eBook

She surrounded this feared field-marshal with spies
and listeners; she caused all his actions to be watched,
every one of his words to be repeated to her, in order
to ascertain whether it had not some concealed sense,
some threatening secret; she doubled the guards of
her palace, and, always trembling with fear, she no
longer dared to occupy any one of her apartments continuously.
Nomadically wandered they about in their own palace,
this Regent Anna Leopoldowna and her husband Prince
Ulrich of Brunswick; remembering the sleeping-chamber
of Biron, she dared not select any one distinct apartment
for constant occupation; every evening found her in
a new room, every night she reposed in a different
bed, and even her most trusted servant often knew
not in which wing of the castle the princely pair
were to pass the night.

She, before whom these millions of Russian subjects
humbled themselves in the dust, trembled every night
in her bed at the slightest rustling, at the whisperings
of the wind, at every breath of air that beat her
closed and bolted doors.

She might, it is true, have released herself from
these torments with the utterance of only one word
of command; it required only a wave of her hand to
send this haughty and dangerous Munnich to Siberia!
Nor was an excuse for such a proceeding wanting.
Count Munnich’s pride and presumption daily
gave occasion for anger; he daily gave offence by
his reckless disregard and disrespect for his chief,
the generalissimo, Prince Ulrich; daily was it necessary
to correct him and to confine him within his own proper
official boundaries.

And such refractory conduct toward a Russian master,
had it not in all times been a terrible and execrable
crime—­a crime for which banishment to Siberia
had always been considered a mild punishment?

Poor Anna! called to rule over Russia, she lacked
only the first and most necessary qualification for
her position—­a Russian heart! There
was, in this German woman’s disposition, too
much gentleness and mildness, too much confiding goodness.
To a less barbarous people she might have been a blessing,
a merciful ruler and gracious benefactor!

But her arm was too weak to wield the knout instead
of the sceptre over this people of slaves, her heart
too soft to judge with inexorable severity according
to the barbarous Russian laws which, never pardoning,
always condemn and flay.

It was this which gradually estranged from her the
hearts of the Russians. They felt that it was
no Russian who reigned over them; and because they
had no occasion to tremble and creep in the dust before
her, they almost despised her, and derided the idyllic
sentiments of this good German princess who wished
to realize her fantastic dreams by treating a horde
of barbarians as a civilized people!

The slaves longed for their former yoke; they looked
around them with a feeling of strangeness, and to
them it seemed unnatural not everywhere to see the
brandished knout, the avenging scaffold, and the transport-carriages
departing for Siberia!